


containment

by vatonages



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Brief Violence, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 09:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17485808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vatonages/pseuds/vatonages
Summary: "Your mistake was creating a decoy for them to love in the first place," Renjun says, because he cares for Jeno more than he ever intended to."If you act lovable, then you will just be lovable." Renjun sees, feels the flash of purple again. It lingers just a bit longer this time, a darker hue. The color of a storm. It spreads out like ink and corrupts the placid blueness of Jeno's heart. Renjun aches with the desire to clean it up again, and then it disperses so that it's no longer visible.





	containment

**Author's Note:**

> con·tain·ment  
> /kənˈtānmənt/  
> noun  
> the action of keeping something harmful under control or within limits.

Renjun knows things that shouldn't be known, the knowledge of them weighing him down and making his body ache. Renjun is a tragedy, a disaster, a bad omen. He knows things humans have the privilege of not knowing, things that make him see shadows dance across the wall of his room like puppets that tell awful stories. 

 

Renjun wishes he could weep so the fear had a place to go, so it could escape his body, leave him, but his eyes are comically dry when he reaches up to touch them.

 

Renjun doesn't believe anyone is truly good anymore. Renjun can see them, their menacing auras, their teeth too close together in their mouths, cruel smiles jammed full of too many teeth. 

 

it's awkward because it is not genuine. it is unsettling because it is a perversion of joy. The uncanny valley of human emotion. Renjun gets goosebumps. 

  
  
  


A man is standing too close to him in the gas station at night and breathing too heavily. He grabs Renjun's slim wrist when he thinks the timing is right but it doesn't last long, wrenching away his hand in pain, ghoulish shriek echoing throughout the establishment. The cashier's eyes are wide like saucers. The skin on the man's hand is burning off to expose the bone. There is no blood. Nothing about it is natural. The indifference with which Renjun hands her his card shocks her.

 

"Just the drink", he says, sliding it onto the counter. The man is writhing on the floor. The air smells like burnt skin and malice. It smells like punishment. "And have a very nice night."

  
  
  


"Why do you let them live?" Yuta asks.  _ You're too kind _ , is what he means.

 

"No," Renjun says. "It's crueler to let them live. When they die, we are releasing them from an eternity of suffering." He glances at the city beneath them, the view making it look like a blueprint, the whole layout visible, a plan for something incredible. That's Seoul for you.

 

"I'd rather let them live forever," he says, and kicks a pebble just to wait for the sound of it hitting the ground below.

  
  


Meeting Jeno is unsettling because Renjun can't  _ feel _ him. He can't tell if Jeno is human or not, and he never has trouble reading people. He can  _ always _ tell. Jeno is ambiguous in a way that could be dangerous, but it just doesn't feel that way. His aura is a clear and gentle blue, like a child's drawing of a lake. 

 

Jeno doesn't give himself away, appears obvious in a way that is calculated. People would rather think of him as a smiley little doll that they can tell all their problems to. And Jeno gives up, allows himself to become an object for them. 

 

After all, in their eyes he merely represents a service. If they ask a question that pries too deep, Jeno redirects it. He is unknowable. Jeno can know everything about them but they must never know anything about him. They never push the subject. Of course, there was never any real desire to know, only the illusion of caring. They are eager to return to talking about themselves.

  
  
  


Renjun sees Jeno's blue aura falter for the first time, and realizes Jeno is plagued by his own demons. It flickers purple with immense sorrow, just ever so briefly, like Jeno feels the first flames of sadness licking at his heart, the heat of them, and snuffs them out instantly.

 

Renjun knows humans describe sorrow as a cold, blue feeling. The  _ absence _ of feeling more than feeling anything in particular. But creatures like Renjun know that there is a kind of passion to it. The difference between Renjun and Jeno is that Renjun fans the flame. He indulges it.

 

"What you're doing isn't really living," Renjun says. "You have to let yourself be known to really exist. If people don't know anything about you then what are you? There is no joy without pain, Jeno." he reminds him. "No love without vulnerability."

 

"Am I a coward to say I'd rather people love the me I create for them instead? I don't know what I'd do if they realized they didn't love me so much after all." Renjun could say a lot of things to that, but he's trying to keep some of his cards hidden. Jeno could still hurt him after all, even though he's just revealed some of his own cards. Their friendship is abnormal, to say the least.

 

"Your mistake was creating a decoy for them to love in the first place," Renjun says, because he cares for Jeno more than he ever intended to. 

 

"If you act lovable, then you will just be lovable." Renjun sees, feels the flash of purple again. It lingers just a bit longer this time, a darker hue. The color of a storm. It spreads out like ink and corrupts the placid blueness of Jeno's heart. Renjun aches with the desire to clean it up again, and then it disperses so that it's no longer visible.

 

"You're right," Jeno concedes. He gets no pleasure from games of the ego. He has a practiced gentleness. Hardly anything is worth starting a fight over. He lets things float on by instead of desperately grabbing at them. Renjun envies that. _ Let it go _ , he tells himself.  _ Just let it go.  _

 

But things haunt him forever.

 

Jeno is so nice. Renjun is scared of ruining him, but he thinks for once that he should just let himself have this. If he gets ruined, at least he's the one who let it happen. At least he had a say in it, but part of him trusts Jeno, even if he won't say it out loud. He won't say it out loud because he doesn't want to take responsibility for it if he ends up being a fool for feeling that way, but thinking something is like saying it to yourself anyway. 

  
  


Jeno is an enigma to him, something eroded over time into something soft and round, no edges left, no aggression in its form. His face is kind, and when Renjun speaks to him, his eyes have a sort of indifference.

 

Renjun used to think that Jeno wasn't absorbing anything he was saying, but now he knows what the look means; something like unconditional understanding. There's something in his eyes. Love, compassion. Renjun can't choose just one word to call it. What he does know is that nothing he can say will shock it out of Jeno's eyes.

 

He listens with a sweet and attentive gaze like a child learning something for the first time, ready to accept it. Renjun wonders what terrible things have been confided in Jeno at night in the privacy of a warmly lit room, under the spell of those loving eyes. Eyes that seem to command people to tell Jeno about their greatest wounds and tragedies without ever really asking for it out loud. Jeno demands the truth.

  
  


Renjun realizes later on that he has made a miscalculation. It's not often that he makes one, but he can acknowledge it when he does. Jeno is not naive. He used to think Jeno's softness was openness, that Jeno was untouched by the cruelty of the world. Rather Jeno lives alongside it comfortably, regarding it like an old friend, intimately aware of it but choosing not to mention it out of respect or consideration for those around him. This all comes from a place of strength, a resolve inside himself. No matter what ugly truths he hears, becomes aware of, he won't let them ruin him.

  
  


"Time makes most people spiteful," Renjun says. "Bitter and raw. Pain ruins them, and pain always comes with time. Time splits them open and grates on their nerves until they give up, and then they let themselves grow hard so they can have protection again. They become afraid of being soft. They're sick of being so vulnerable to pain. They just want protection." When Renjun says "people", mostly he means "humans". He's not sure if Jeno realizes that or not, but Jeno grabs his hand, thumb rubbing circles into it soothingly like Renjun isn't talking about other people at all, but rather himself. Renjun hasn't considered that possibility. He isn't sure he wants to.

 

"I think it's a choice. I think people curl up inside of themselves or lash out and hurt others. They defend or they weaponize." He stops rubbing circles with his thumb.

 

"I won't let myself hurt others," he says. The hue of purple is dark and murky this time, like food coloring. It looks black until you see it in the light. Renjun holds his hand tighter.

 

"Jeno," he says. He's not sure how to say it, how to tell Jeno something he already knows. "The sadness inside you is growing stronger. If you continue like this, you will break your own heart." Renjun feels sadness infiltrating his own body, but he can't tell if it's Jeno's or his own. Jeno can't possibly be a human, he thinks. He would never have this effect on Renjun.

 

Jeno inhales sharply. Renjun wipes a tear.

 

"You can cry?" Jeno whispers.

 

"I couldn't before," Renjun says, almost in awe as he tastes salt on his own lips.

 

"What do I do?" Jeno asks. "I don't do these things. I don't feed into them. I thought it would go away on its own." Jeno is discovering that when all you do is listen to the problems other people are having, it leaves you with no time to recognize or deal with your own. It works until people aren't talking to you anymore, until it's just you and your demons alone in a room together.

 

Jeno doesn't know sorrow like Renjun does. It starts out as a flame, and loses control fast, like a wildfire that eats up all the surrounding foliage like it's starving. You have to put it out before it's too late. Fire spreads fast.

 

Coldness is not something that exists. It is merely the absence of heat. Happiness is just the absence of sorrow. That warmth. You have to pour water on it the second it grows too hot. You have to be a little paranoid to survive. You can't let yourself relax too much when the happiness is back. Sadness can only withstand the hunger for so long.

  
  


Renjun sits with Jeno's head in his lap, stroking his hair. Renjun never used to be this gentle. Yuta would scoff at him.

 

"You have to let yourself be known. You have to let someone know you," Renjun says, like a doctor prescribing medicine.

 

Jeno's eyes glow a soft amber, a vision taking him somewhere. Jeno lets Renjun come with him.

Renjun sees Jeno, and he sees him sitting there as someone speaks to him. Jeno is so good at hiding everything because he emotes. He laughs with them, smiles with them. He makes them feel more human and in doing so, he becomes more human in their eyes as well. It's artificiality masquerading as reality. It's the lack of anything at all, hidden by  _ something, _ and people don't know a single thing about Jeno but they walk away feeling like they know it all, and that satisfies them. 

 

To them, Jeno is an open book. There is nothing complex about him, what is hard to understand about a happy boy? He smiles for he is experiencing joy. They know all about him. The purple is so deep it hurts Renjun's eyes. He can't stand it anymore.

 

There is no knowing. There is only the illusion of knowing.

  
  
  


"Let me know you," Renjun suggests.

 

"It's so comfortable," Jeno says. "Right now, it's so comfortable. But I think...if you get to know the real me, it won't ever be comfortable again." He whispers this, like he doesn't even want to hear himself say it. "And what do I do then? Walk around with my unlovable soul forever?"

 

"Don't decide things for me," Renjun says, gently scolding. "You're already deciding I won't like you, making up my mind for me. You have already shown more of yourself to me than anyone else. You have to give me the benefit of the doubt." Jeno inhales shakily.

 

"Okay," he says.

  
  
  


Jeno is so beautiful. A pretty cast to hide a broken limb, a mural painted over a cracked and dirtied wall, a diversion. Nobody can pity him if they don't see the reasons why they should pity him. No one can sympathize with your plight if they don't know the plight. Jeno hates being pitied. He craves to be understood, but he hates being known. He hates existing at the mercy of others.

 

Renjun kisses Jeno and feels the sadness in him burn up like chaparral in the dry season of California. Wildfire season, ash in the air and fire on the horizon. Fires like tangled hair. Wild, untamed. Nobody knows where to begin. How do you fix something like that? Home becomes someplace bad for you, toxic and dangerous. The face of a friend morphing into a foe. It's happened to Renjun before. 

 

Renjun pulls away because it's burning Jeno up inside but Jeno isn't moving away. He's just letting himself go up in flames.

 

"Why are you so sad?" Renjun asks, well aware it's a loaded question. "I thought it could be something beautiful. Something good."

 

"Having something," Jeno begins, whispering, eyes wide and fearful. "Means you can lose it. I didn't know you before. I didn't know what I was missing out on, but I do now. If you leave, how will I live with the knowledge..." Jeno's shaking. "That I had you, and then I  _ lost _ you?"

 

"Stop speaking of the future like it's certain," Renjun begs. "Stop it." His voice is a little desperate. "Can you see the future?" He asks Jeno, eyes wide. "Is that it? Is that why you look so haunted all the time?" Ghosts of the future are just like ghosts of the past, but they're crueler. They taunt you even when you hide your head under the covers. 

 

"Only sometimes," Jeno admits. "But I never see anything about you." he whispers.

 

"Jeno," Renjun says. "If I ever want to leave you, I will erase every memory of me from your mind. You will not even know the name  _ Renjun _ . I will wipe the slate clean. I will make you new again. I will spare you. But to feel that pain...It means you have to love me. Do you love me, Jeno?" Jeno licks his chapped lower lip, and Renjun can feel the answer.

 

"Good," Renjun says, relaxing. "Kiss me back then. Do not use me to fan the flame," he says, staring right into Jeno's eyes. He knows Jeno knows what he means when Jeno nods like a child who has done something wrong. "Kiss me knowing that I will never let you suffer because of me, that I will never be the cause of your suffering."

  
  


Jeno kisses him back. The purple climbs up his bones and tries to bleed into his limbs. Renjun feels it lick into his hands. Jeno snuffs it out. The flames are stubborn, but so is Jeno.

 

There's something pink and sweet blooming in Jeno's chest now, something gentle and cold like running ice water over a burn, a bag of frozen vegetables soothing a fever.

 

Renjun calls it love.

 


End file.
